Holistic Disease Prevention and What Constitutes a Healthy Lifestyle

Holistic Disease Prevention and What Constitutes a Healthy Lifestyle

In the realm of holistic health, there are many available options that can help a person achieve wellness and vitality.   The biggest obstacle as it pertains to personal health is a person’s own mindset.  Since the body has an innate ability to heal itself as it constantly strives to maintain homeostasis, we can cooperate with our body by adapting to a lifestyle that compliments our own wellness plan.  A whole food diet that focuses on optimum nutrition and food combining; the use of supplements and essential oils; limiting our exposure to chemicals; the art of Yoga; Energy Medicine and Chiropractic care, are some of the ways that constitute a healthy lifestyle to maximize our efforts in Holistic disease prevention.  Let’s look at each individual aspect in detail.

The foods that we eat have very big implications on our health.  Not only do we have to be mindful about the types of food we eat, whether processed or raw, refined or whole, ‘natural’ or organic, but we also have to consider how it was grown or raised.   Our diet alone has the ability to create either wellness or disease. To understand its positive or negative effects on our bodies, let’s look at what a lack of nutrition can do to us.   Nutritionist Dr. Patrick Quillin says that one of the primary causes of cancer is poor nutrition:  an excess, deficiency or imbalance of any nutrient.   Additionally, here are three reasons why he uses nutrition in cancer treatment:

1. To avoid malnutrition.  Forty percent or more of cancer patients actually die from malnutrition, not from cancer.

2. To reduce the toxic effects of chemo and radiation.  He explains that properly nourished patients experience less nausea, malaise, immune suppression, hair loss, and organ toxicity than patients on routine oncology programs.

3. To bolster immune functions.  There is an abundance of data linking nutrient intake to the quality and quantity of immune factors that fight cancer. (1)

Cancer is just one disease that can be brought on by poor nutrition.  The other two diseases that top the charts are heart disease and diabetes.  It’s interesting to note that these diseases are not caused by bacteria, but rather nutritional deficiencies and chemical toxicity.  The National Center for Health Statistics gave the ten leading causes of death in the U.S. for the year 2006:

            1. There were 631,636 deaths from heart disease.

            2. There were 559,888 deaths from cancer.

            3. There were 72,449 deaths from diabetes. (2)

Alzheimer’s disease ranked just below diabetes with 72,432 reported deaths.   There are certainly other maladies besides the diseases just mentioned, that are just as important to consider when contemplating our diets.  Osteoporosis, chronic fatigue, arthritis, fibromyalgia, IBS, high blood pressure to name a few, are very good reasons why we need to take a serious look at the foods we eat. The Surgeon General’s Report on Nutrition and Health acknowledged, “What we eat may affect our risk for several of the leading causes of death for Americans, notably, degenerative diseases such as atherosclerosis, heart disease, stroke, diabetes and some types of caner. These disorders, together, now account for more than two-thirds of all deaths in the United States.” (3)

________________________________________________________________

(1) Patrick Quillin, Ph. D., Boosting Cancer With Nutrition

(2) National Center for Health Statistics, 2006 "Leading Causes of Death" (web address: www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/1cod.htm

(3)Alternative Medicine, The Definitive Guide, second edition

________________________________________________________________

This blog was taken from my thesis, and I will share my thesis with you in its entirety, 

as I feel it contains valuable information.  I hope you find it useful and beneficial.

Thank you for reading.

:) Karen.